Creating mutualism between research and teaching

Teaching in academia is often seen as a distraction from research. Teaching takes time, energy, resources and, most importantly, does not produce any papers. In many universities, if you are successful in acquiring third-party funding, you can even buy yourself out of teaching. However, the university educational system is fundamentally based on the interactions between teaching and research.

We argue that it is possible, and profitable, to create a mutualism between teaching and research. Our own experiences in the field of plant physiology has shown that bringing our latest research into the classroom can benefit both our students and ourselves as scientists.